


Rise to Grace

by Project0506



Series: Rex adopts a Jedi [5]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Adults discussing their feelings like adults, Conflict Resolution, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Healthy Relationships, Healthy conflict resolution practices, Some Humor, gen - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-04
Updated: 2020-04-17
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:01:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23472115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Project0506/pseuds/Project0506
Summary: (Direct prequel to the Art of Bajur)You don't justget oversomething like Ryloth
Relationships: CT-7567 | Rex & Anakin Skywalker
Series: Rex adopts a Jedi [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1684942
Comments: 71
Kudos: 907





	1. Rise to Grace

Behind him there’s a quiet scrabbling of slipped footing and a whispered, heartfelt curse as the climber hurries to compensate.

Well, Rex thinks, that took longer than he expected. “Sir,” he acknowledges. The noises quiet. A heartbeat later Skywalker emerges from the long shadows of the hangar, his face an odd contrast of sheepish and mulish. He takes the hand Rex offers though, and scrambles the last few feet to join Rex on top of the Lartie’s left cannon.

The silence between them is unfamiliar, uncomfortable. Skywalker spends some time settling into a seat, next to Rex but not so close they’re touching. Even that only occupies him for a minute or two and then there’s nothing left to use as a distraction. They sit there for long minutes, feet on the wing hinge, a gulf between them.

“It’s been two days,” Skywalker starts. He’s clenching and unclenching his hands, his teeth; his every fidgety motion shows he’s a confused wave of emotions and he doesn’t know which to feel the most. Anger, Rex thinks, but also confusion and hurt. Rex can relate.

Rex hums in acknowledgment. “That’s all the time I’m allowed then?”

Skywalker winces. His limbs seem to fold up on him. “I just don’t understand why you’re mad at me and I can’t _fix it_ if you won’t _tell me_!” He grips his knees. “Aren’t you always talking about communication?”

Rex is still trying to phrase a response when Skywalker continues.

“I know you’re waiting for me to figure things out on my own but I tried and I _can’t_. So this is me.” He swallows. “Asking for help. Tell me what I fucked up and then let me try to fix it. Don’t.” He swallows again. “Don’t just assume that I can…”

“I fully planned on discussing it with you sir.”

Skywalker sniffs, disdainfully. “Once I karked it up worse?”

“Once I trusted myself to hold a conversation without being deliberately cruel.”

That throws him. For the first time since Skywalker decided to climb up after Rex, the general meets his eyes. “What?”

Rex smiles sadly. “I gave you the wrong impression. When I asked you for space, it wasn’t a punishment or a test. I asked because _I_ needed space.” Rex sighs and scrubs a hand through his hair.

“I’m angry at you,” he admits. They had both already known, yet the admission still drops between them like a bomb. Skywalker’s hands curl into fists. “And I wanted to make sure that when we had this conversation it would be constructive. If we had spoken right then I’d have said some cruel, unfair

things I didn’t mean.” Rex tips his head in consideration. “Well, I’d have meant them at the time, but I would have regretted them later. And that wouldn’t be fair to either of us. So I needed time, and I didn’t explain to you why.” He shrugs. “This is me,” he parrots, “admitting I screwed that one up. I apologize.”

There’s another loaded pause, and Skywalker breaks it with a watery laugh. “Of frakkin course you had a perfectly logical reason,” he says. “Couldn’t you have just been irrational and then we could have had ourselves a cathartic screaming match and get it all over with?”

“I’ve found that generally counterproductive sir.”

“Force forbid.” Skywalker takes a deep breath and Rex steels himself. “Do you want me to go away some more or can we have that conversation now.”

They’re doing this, then. Rex folds his legs up, tucking his ankles under opposite thighs. “I owe you that at least,” he admits, if he’d left the general desperately searching for the answer to a test Rex hadn’t intended to give him.

Skywalker matches his pose. “What happened? We were all set to charge and then you were just suddenly… furious. At me.”

“At a lot of things,” Rex corrects, “including myself. But yes, mostly at you. But before that, I was scared.” The general eyes him dubiously, and Rex shakes his head. “Not just scared. Terrified. I was in front of our troops, awaiting the command to advance. And I looked down and in front of my boots was open air and I froze. A troop commander cannot afford to have a weakness like that and justify remaining in his position.”

“What?” Skywalker sputters. “No, what? That’d didn’t… you swung out…”

“I wasn’t frozen for long, maybe a second or two. And I was able to compartmentalize quickly enough that I didn’t jeopardize the mission. But the fact is that it happened. And it can’t; not if I want to keep calling myself a troop commander.”

It takes a long time for Skywalker to work through that, long minutes stretching like elastiplast marked by the shifting micro-expressions flitting across his face before realization begins to dominate.

“Is this about Ryloth?”

Rex’s jaw twitches without his permission. “Yes.”

“But I caught you!” Skywalker explodes.

“You threw me,” Rex corrects.

“And then _I caught you_ ,” the general snaps.

“Yes sir,” Rex says blandly. “But before that you threw me. You had a tool in one place and needed it in another, so you threw it there.”

Skywalker is on his feet like a shot. His face is a rictus mask of rage and devastation and Rex’s own stomach clenches desperately with ice.

Rex throws his left hand up, fist clenched tight and fingers facing forward, in a battlefield ‘halt’. Stunningly, miraculously, Skywalker obeys. Rex breathes slowly.

“That,” Rex says and his voice breaks on the word. “That was one of those cruel and unfair things I never want to say to you,” he says. “And I owe you another apology for it.”

Slowly, slowly enough that anxiety begins to burn at Rex’s throat, Skywalker sits back down. Everything about him is guarded and wary, and it was Rex that did that. Rex knows somehow that he only has this one more chance.

_This_ was exactly why he was still trying to delay this conversation.

“I need a second sir,” he admits, and his general nods.

“Should I leave?”

“Don’t leave!”

He looks taken aback by Rex’s vehemence, but he settles.

It’s more than a second. It’s closer to three minutes by Rex’s reckoning before his breathing is steady and he’s confident the only words he’ll say are the ones he intends to.

“For about two and a half seconds I knew I was going to die.” He starts. His voice is calm. “I didn’t have time to rationalize that you were there, that you might have had control of the situation. I didn’t know that, because you didn’t tell me that. All I knew was there was open air and I was going to die. And then we got up and were back to another battle and there was no chance to think. I honestly can’t remember what happened for most of the rest of that campaign; for a lot of it I wasn’t even sure I wasn’t dead, I couldn’t feel much of anything. After that, there was always something else to do and it didn’t seem as important to try to analyze that. I just really wanted to forget about it. And then we went to Cerasis-4 and we had to swingline from this very Lartie onto a building. And for about a second the only thing I could think of was there was open air and I was going to die.”

Rex measures his breathing, ignores the horrified sound his general makes. “I pushed through that and pushed right into angry. At the war, at the Seps, at the Cerasans, at myself, at the Lartie, at the fucking building we were trying to liberate. At you.”

“Fuck Rex I’m _sorry_!”

Rex nods. “I know. I forgive you. I’d forgiven you two days ago. But I’m still angry because human brains aren’t logical.” Rex laughs; it’s a shattered sound. “I still can’t make myself look at the floor of the hangar right now because human brains aren’t logical.”

Skywalker nearly lunges at him, stopping himself only at the last few inches before contact. “Can I?” he begs, “fuck Rex please can I-”

Rex reaches for him.

“I’m sorry,” he cries, forehead pressed against Rex’s, his hands clenched tight around Rex’s elbows. “Rex I’m so sorry, I’m sorry. I won’t, I ever again, I wont- if you, I’m _sorry_.”

“I know,” Rex murmurs. “I know I forgive you.” Over and over again, in hopes that one of them gets through to his general. He wraps a hand around the back of his general’s neck, under the fall of his hair, and holds him tight.

He doesn’t know how long they sit pressed together as they are, how long it takes for Skywalker’s sobs to calm to choppy breaths.

“I can’t actually fix this can I?” he realizes. He grips Rex’s arms tighter. “I can’t make you… not afraid.”

“I’m not aware of any way that’s legal,” Rex says with a fraction of his usual dry humor, trying to get them back on equilibrium. The general rewards him with a small, reluctant chuckle. Rex smiles. “Time sir.”

Skywalker makes a playfully disgusted noise. “Of course you were gonna say that.” He makes to pull away. Rex tightens his grip on his neck, and moves his other hand to press hard at Skywalker’s lower back. His general stills.

“Just. Logic. Remind me,” Rex says. “That our grappling gear is good and will hold my weight. That Spec checks everything before he assigns it to us, to make sure our lines won’t fail on us. That Crash is a perfectly decent pilot and his name is ironic.” They both laugh a little at that. “Remind me that you’re there. That you… that you have things under control. That you won’t let me fall.”

“I can do that,” Skywalker swears immediately. “I will do that. As often as you need. I promise.” He pulls back a half an inch to tap their foreheads together again.

Rex lets him go. “Then that’ll be enough.” Skywalker doesn’t retreat.

“Will we be okay?”

Rex taps his their heads together again, just a hair sharper this time. “We’re already okay sir.” Rex’s general exhales shaky relief.

“Okay. Okay that’s good.”

It feels a little awkward, the way they linger in each other’s space. It hadn’t before now, but they’ve had their foundation rattled and it will take a little bit to work themselves back into their routine. They’ll get back there. Rex has full confidence in his general.

“A favor, general?” He offers. Skywalker makes an inquiring noise. “Can you get me down?”

Skywalker beams, part relief. He draws Rex close, keeps firm careful hold on his arms and Rex is achingly grateful for the consideration. “Always, Rex.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well this is as done as it's gonna get I guess

“Jetpacks.”

The word is sudden and out of place, and it startles Rex right out of the unending spiral in his head.

No one seems to have noticed Rex’s mental absence. All attention is on Skywalker, who’s staring down Jesse. “Hey Lieutenant how much ignorance am I going to have to fake for you to get us jetpacks? Something better than the GAR stuff. Something with some whoosh.”

Jesse tries to look innocent, tries to look affronted at a baseless accusation. They all know him better than that. To Rex’s left, Tinker perks up and shuffles closer. “What kinda lift capacity we talkin’ here Jess? Can ya get me a prot to take apart? GAR issue’s shit for more’n a couple hundred yards, I coulda done one better from me tube.” Jesse denies everything loudly and vehemently. His fingers battlesign _‘talk later’_.

Hardcase, near the other end of the transport, latches onto the idea with regrettable enthusiasm. “We’re gonna get _jetpacks_ general?!” Hardcase already has plans for his jetpack. He’s going to call it Scupper. No one really wants to know why.

Carefully, Skywalker’s shoulder presses against Rex’s.

“Crash’s name is ironic,” he murmurs, and suddenly Rex understands. Relief and affection both surge up so quickly he might choke with it. “That thing with the rocks that one time wasn’t his fault and he put us all down safe regardless. I asked Spec to double-check your chute. He used it to teach the shinies all the inspection points and the procedures.”

They’re pressed side-by-side, kitted up and en route to a drop, so Rex can’t pull him in for an embrace. He squeezes Skywalker’s knee instead, and hopes his gratitude shows through. He’s not sure he’s able to talk just yet. Skywalker grips the back of his hand at the wrist, squeezes back.

“A little faith Captain,” Skywalker chides. His grin is too wide, too trooper-style shit-eating to be anything approaching serious. “I totally have this.”

Cheeky shit. Rex snorts, flips his hand to smack the back of it against Skywalker’s leg. The general laughs. He has the most inelegant giggle snort when he’s pleased with himself. It never fails to make Rex smile.

The troopers have far more opinions on jetpacks than Rex would have imagined, far more than he’s comfortable ever knowing. Preferences and the heckling thereof fly fast and thick. Tinker’s made Slack swap places with him for the seat next to Jesse. He's set himself to grilling the Lieutenant for all the spec details he’s pretending he wouldn’t know. Hardcase is planning 'cool-looking' airborne jetpack combat. Tup wants his jetpack in purple.

“I have you,” the general murmurs just for the two of them. Rex nods, presses their shoulders together again.

He’s a good man, Rex’s general.

Even if now Rex will eventually have to deal with Torrent in jetpacks.


End file.
